Virginia Tech fatal shooting revives fears from 2007 massacre

The incident, which left a police officer and another man dead, also shows how far universities have come in spreading campus safety alerts.

by Richard Fausset, James Oliphant and Stephen Ceasar

December 9, 2011

Once more there were gunshots, a lockdown and a campus community trapped in offices and classrooms, waiting in fear.

Once more there was terror at Virginia Tech.

Less than five years after a deranged undergraduate carried out the bloodiest shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, the sprawling, picturesque campus was paralyzed Thursday by an incident that left a university police officer dead, as well as an unidentified man reported to have been the shooter.

The slain officer was identified as Deriek W. Crouse, 39, of Christiansburg, Va., a four-year veteran of the Virginia Tech Police Department and a father of five, the university said Thursday night.

Many details remained hazy. Police would not divulge a motive, nor would they confirm that the case was, as reported by several news outlets, a murder-suicide — even though the university told students and employees in the late afternoon that there was "no longer an active threat," and a state police sergeant encouraged the media to "read between the lines" when asked whether the gunman was still at large.

Though the tally of dead did not approach the 32 killed in 2007 by Seung-hui Cho, the resurgence of fear and grief could not be measured in numbers.

"It's unimaginably sad," Andrew S. Becker, associate chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, who had left campus 30 minutes before the news of the shooting, said in an email. "Those who lost loved ones or friends on April 16, 2007, now have the scars opened, again. I feel for the families of the two we know have been killed."

Thursday's shooting occurred on the day that university officials, including the campus police chief, were in Washington appealing a $55,000 fine by the Department of Education for the school's failure to provide a "timely warning" in the 2007 tragedy. Federal officials criticized the school for waiting more than two hours after students were shot in a dorm before sending out an email warning.

After the Cho shooting, however, the school took the lead among American universities in implementing a sophisticated emergency notification system. Praised Thursday by school officials as highly effective, it alerted faculty and students on phones, desktop computers and social media moments after the shots were fired.

"Gun shots reported — Coliseum parking lot," it said. "Stay inside. Secure doors. Emergency personnel responding. Call 911 for help."

It occurred on a campus sleepier than usual. Thursday was a "reading day," the cram day before final exams, with no classes scheduled. Authorities said about 12:15 p.m., a campus officer was conducting a routine traffic stop in a parking lot near the Cassell Coliseum when a gunman approached the officer and fired at him in view of several witnesses.

The man fled across campus as officials put out a description: white male, gray sweat pants, gray hat with neon-green brim, maroon hoodie with backpack.

They had essentially described the campus everyman. But eventually a second body was found in another parking lot, and a weapon was recovered. The voluntary lockdown that had kept students and employees at their desks for hours — in many cases posting Facebook updates on their status — was lifted before nightfall.

At a news conference late Thursday afternoon, officials emphasized that the investigation was ongoing and that many of the details required further confirmation. Virginia State Police Sgt. Bob Carpentieri said it was "a possibility" that the crime was connected to a robbery the night before in nearby Radford, Va.

A number of students said they felt adequately warned by officials employing the new emergency response system. Freshman Bronwyn Foley, 18, of Salem, Va., was crossing the broad green Drillfield at the center of campus when sirens began blaring.

"I immediately received a text message that told me what was happening and to go back to my dorm," she said.

Ryan Waddell, 21, a junior from Virginia Beach, Va., said that since 2007, students have been well aware of the safety procedures, which are explained to them during orientation.

It is nearly impossible, however, to ensure 100% safety at a large, open campus like Virginia Tech, with its enrollment of more than 30,000. This year, Virginia Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli, in his appeal of the federal fine to an administrative judge, accused "federal bureaucrats" of "Monday-morning quarterbacking at its very worst" in criticizing the school's response to the Cho shooting.

After the 2007 massacre, colleges and universities around the country improved their emergency notification systems and worked to speed up police reaction times to a potential shooter on campus, according to Christopher Blake, associate director of the International Assn. of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

Many universities put into place crime warnings that can go out via cellphones, emails, texts and other systems and bolstered the more traditional sirens and flashing signs and lights at intersections, Blake said.

In a statement Thursday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said his department wanted to do "everything possible to help prevent future threats to campus safety, both in Virginia and across the country."

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said he was "deeply saddened," and he praised Virginia Tech as a "university of great resolve" whose members would emerge "stronger and more united than ever before."

But Becker, the languages professor, gave a hint of a discordant note that could hover over campus for the near future.

"My wife says that the continuous posts of Facebook of 'I'm ok' are marvelous," he wrote in another email as the incident unfolded.

But they were also a reminder, he said, "that someone is not ok."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-virginia-tech-shooting-20111209,0,6591767,print.story

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Barry Beach freed after 29 years to await new Montana trial

Barry Beach has walked out of a Montana jail a free man for the first time in nearly 29 years, pending a review of his conviction in the 1979 murder of a woman on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, a killing he once confessed to in shocking detail.

A tearful Beach, 49, emerged from the Fergus County jail in Poplar and into the arms of family members and supporters Wednesday after District Judge E. Wayne Phillips ordered him released on his own recognizance pending a final ruling on a new trial.

"I've spent 29 years in prison fighting for this moment. Rest assured that I will continue to fight for justice," Beach told Montana's KRTV television in Lewistown.

The state's attorney general is appealing Phillips' ruling to the Montana Supreme Court, which is likely to take at least several months.

"We have an obligation to defend a murder conviction rendered by a Montana jury against a man who confessed" to the most serious of crimes, said a statement from the attorney general's office. The original prosecution team in the case included Marc Racicot, Montana's former governor and the chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Bush administration.

Beach was sentenced to 100 years in prison in 1983 for the bludgeoning death of 17-year-old Kimberly Nees. Beach, while living in Louisiana, had confessed to local detectives who were questioning him about another murder investigation in that state.

Beach told the detectives that he struck Nees with a wrench and a tire iron after she refused his sexual advances.

But since then, several other witnesses have come forward suggesting that Nees was killed by a group of angry girls, whose crime was then covered up by reservation police.

Beach's attorneys have pointed out that a bloody handprint on Nees' truck and blood on a towel found not far from the murder scene did not match the defendant's, and there were problems with laboratory analysis of a hair found at the scene.

"This is all about justice for Kimberly. This is all about finding that peace of mind for her family, because I created a lie by mistake that her family put their faith into, and I've got to correct that," Beach told reporters. "I can't change the confession, but I can help bring justice to Kim Nees, and that's the only thing I can do."

Beach's confession has long been the centerpiece of the case. But he now says it was coerced by police who told him he would be sent to the electric chair if he did not admit the crime.

The original tape was lost or erased before the trial, but in a detailed transcript Beach describes having hitched a ride with Nees at the end of a day during which he'd been drinking. When his truck got stuck in the sand, he exploded in fury and walked back to town.

He told Louisiana detectives that he struck her with a wrench and a tire iron after she refused his sexual advances.

"She was covering her head with her arms and screaming," he said. When she stopped moving, he said, he checked her pulse, which weakened and then stopped. "I stood up again and I said, 'Oh my God, what have I done?' And I took a minute to think and I realized I had killed her."

Prosecutors said Beach's confession matched several details of the case that weren't publicly known, but defense lawyers said it was also a mismatch on several points.

Doubt has persisted for years. Even Nees' sister, Pam Nees, told the Montana Board of Prisons and Parole in 2007 that she didn't think Beach was guilty.

"I honestly believe that Barry did not kill my sister," she told the board then in a statement. "I feel Barry's pain and his family's pain, also. Finding the truth will set Barry free."

But the board, after reviewing the evidence and testimony, including defense claims about purported mishandling of the case, concluded that Beach had been rightfully convicted and was not entitled to clemency or parole.

"Except for the color of clothing Kimberly Nees wore, nothing from the confession conflicted with the actual crime scene," the board said in its ruling. "It is apparent to us that it would have been impossible to create so detailed and so correct a false confession."

The board also noted that no fingerprints of any women supposedly involved in the attack were found in the back of Nees' pickup truck. "No one is entitled to a perfect murder trial, but Mr. Beach had a very fine one," the board concluded.

The most compelling new evidence presented to the judge in the latest appeal seemed to come from Fort Peck residents who said that Nees death was the result of a fight among teenage girls. One woman testified that she overheard partying teenagers and then the cries of girls beating another girl near the location where Nees' body was found.

All the women linked to that version of events have denied involvement, but the judge found the combination of witness testimony and possible mishandling of evidence was enough to warrant a new trial, the ruling that prosecutors are now appealing.

Much of the impetus for the new trial came from the work of the nonprofit group Centurion Ministries and a volunteer organization called Montanans for Justice, which have publicly campaigned for Beach's release and pointed out flaws in the case against him.

"There is not one piece of physical evidence or eyewitness testimony that links Barry Beach to this crime," the group said on its website.

Prominent Billings, Mont. businessman James Ziegler, a former Yellowstone County commissioner who is active in prison ministries, met Beach at the state prison in 1984 and has worked to help him since then. He told the court he would aid and oversee the former prisoner during his release.

"From what I know of Barry, I think he's eager to get out after all this time that he's been away from us and become a good, productive citizen," Ziegler told the Billings Gazette.

Beach, who wore a conservative blue shirt and tie during the court hearing, emerged from the jail wearing a Washington Redskins football jersey bearing the number 28, representing, he told the Gazette, the 28 years and 11 months he'd spent behind bars.

"Thank God. I can't say that enough," he said. "I praise the Lord."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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Virginia Tech shooting: 2007 massacre led to changes nationwide

After the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, colleges and universities around the country improved their emergency notification systems and worked to speed up the reaction time of campus police to a potential shooter on campus, according to Christopher Blake, associate director of the International Assn. of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

Many universities put into place crime warning systems that can go out by cellphone, email, text message and other methods, while bolstering more traditional methods such as sirens and flashing signs and lights at intersections, Blake said Thursday.

“A lot of institutions looked at multiple ways to put out the word to the community,” he said. “Many institutions strengthened their emergency procedures in both hardware and software.”

University police forces have also spent more time developing tactics to deal with the prospect of a gunman on campus seeking to inflict wide-ranging damage. After the 2007 shootings, school police are more aware than ever of “the urgency in getting there and stopping the person,” he said.

One of the most troubling aspects of that incident was how the mentally ill shooter was allowed to remain a student despite previous signs of serious instability. Since then, campuses around the country say they watch their students more closely for signs of possible mental illness or other problems.

They have set up teams of counselors, police and administrators to screen reports about potentially troubled students and to discuss treatment or discipline. And many colleges are prepared to act more quickly than in the past, particularly if there is any explicit warning of violence, college mental health and other experts say.

Many colleges now require a mental health assessment for a troubled student to stay enrolled and more readily expel those who refuse to comply.

Campuses' responsibility to pay attention to those mental health issues is at the center of a lawsuit filed by a UCLA student who was stabbed and had her throat slashed by a fellow student in a school lab on Oct. 8, 2009.

The victim is suing her assailant and the University of California regents, alleging in part that school officials and faculty did not respond properly to warnings about his potentially violent behavior. UC has denied any liability in the unprovoked attack, which left Katherine Rosen badly wounded and hospitalized for 10 days after surgery.

The Rosen case alleges that, for months before the attack, UCLA officials and professors had received reports of assailant Damon Thompson's “strange, disturbing, erratic, angry, dangerous, threatening and/or paranoid behavior.”

Thompson, who admitted the attack on Rosen, allegedly had threatened teachers based on “his irrational belief that other students had taunted and bullied him” so that he would make mistakes in his chemistry experiments, the suit says. But UCLA failed to warn students about Thompson's potentially violent behavior, the victim contends.

Experts say that the last reported death of a college or university campus police officer was in 2006 when University of Mississippi Officer Robert Langley was fatally injured when he was dragged by a vehicle during a traffic stop near the university campus in Oxford.

Langley had stopped the car's driver, a student, who suddenly sped off and dragged the officer about 200 yards. In 2007, the suspect plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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FBI seeking bomber who tossed Molotov cocktails into police post

The FBI is offering $5,000 for help in finding and prosecuting the person who authorities say threw two Molotov cocktails at a police outpost near UC Santa Barbara last month and left taunting graffiti messages.

A surveillance video released by the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department on Thursday shows a suspect hurling two projectiles at the Isla Vista foot patrol building about 7:45 p.m. on Nov. 15.

The devices did not injure anyone. But they caused damage to the exterior of the foot patrol building in the 6500 block of Trigo Road in Isla Vista and caused a windshield on a nearby patrol vehicle to shatter, authorities said.

A witness reported seeing a lone person, dressed in black, running south from the scene. On the next day, graffiti containing references to the attack was found on and around Snidecor Hall, located on the UC Santa Barbara campus about 500 yards from the bombing site, Santa Barbara sheriff's deputies said.

The markings included the words "Crazy Irish," possibly the suspect's moniker, officials say.

Investigators ask that anyone with information call the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department at (805) 681-4100, the sheriff's anonymous tip line at (805) 681-4171 or the FBI at (805) 642-3995

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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From Google News

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Kansas City police officers join Columbia in attempts to reduce racial bias

Training for Columbia Police Department officers started this Thurs

by Kay Yeung

At Bias-free Columbia Coalition's fourth meeting Wednesday, two Kansas City Police Department officers shared their experience and their approaches to remedy the consequences of racial bias in community policing.

The two officers, Jack Colwell, recently retired, and Sgt. Charles “Chip” Huth, who has been a police officer for 28 years, said their training program reflected the philosophy in their book, “Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect: Transforming Law Enforcement and Police Training."

The Kansas City officers said they started training their staff of supervisors Thursday at the Columbia Police Department, CPD Chief Ken Burton said.

“I think the philosophy is the future of American policing,” Burton said.

Since the 11th Annual Report on Vehicle Stops from Attorney General Chris Koster showed that CPD officers stop black drivers three times more than they stop Caucasians, Burton has been working with Don Love, chairman of the Missouri Association for Social Welfare, to reduce racial bias in the community.

The two officers said their core value is revolutionizing police training and teaching every officer to treat people in the community with respect without exception, which they call unconditional positive respect.

The officers said professional officers should require personnel to see all people as people, bring in integrity, buttress it by courage and express compassion toward all people. Huth said police officers got complaints not because of what they were doing, but how they approached it.

Huth introduced their successful experiment in the west side community of Kansas City, which was named a national model. The west side is a predominantly Hispanic area where undocumented workers and criminals were constantly causing a lot of problems, he said. There were police cars on every block of the streets.

“We have tried everything in the police tricks book, and nothing is working,” Colwell said. “I was a sense of hopeless.”

Colwell said one day, an officer came back and looked at the guy he had arrested three times because of urinating in public and said something needed to change. The officer let people come to their building to drink coffee and use the restroom. It works, Colwell said. The two officers said this area now has essentially no crime in the neighborhood, and people have started to report crimes to the local police.

“When I gain trust from you as a public servant, you are more likely to get on board to help me in our mission of preventing crimes and providing security,” Colwell said. “What it did was just like a click of the mechanism, and all of a sudden, it started turning around significantly.”

http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2011/12/9/kansas-city-police-officers-join-columbia-attempts/

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